Revisiting CoHousing as a Community Model

I say this meaning "one model." So much has gone wrong within the architecture, development and city building industries in their attempts at finding THE model, as if one is somehow better than another. What this implies is that there is only one solution, rather than a continuum defined by the market, mass-customized to their own needs and wants.

To a client a few weeks ago while spitballing ideas for a new format for affordable, urban housing I said, "make up for the increment between market-rate housing and affordable housing by not subsidizing amenity (as many apartment buildings do). Let the neighborhood be the amenity."

In effect, what those other apartments do is internalize community. It reflects a lack of trust in what is outside of the walls, the castle and moat necessitated by fearful populous. For cities to function optimally, those outward connections must be mended, which means both trust in "the other" and the public spaces and transportation designed to be safe, amenable, and sociopetal.

I am reminded by a quote that came across my email inbox today:

“In San Francisco, a home becomes your bedroom, the city is where you live.”

--Planning Commission President Ron Miguel, SF Chronicle, 6/27/10

This captures the fundamental wiring of the 21st century city and reminds of an idea I once put forward:

But, these are still physical examples (ed: referring to Vancouver's point-tower over podium model), that while good IMO, do not effectively address the social issue of the vertical cul-de-sac. One idea would be for mid-to-high rise co-housing, and the understanding that there are hierarchies of social, public, or semi-public space based on the size of the community.

This stems from the idea that any one person's community, the amount of people they can ever really "know" at one time is approximately 150. I probably need to track this back to source the info, but something tells me it was one of those tidbits that stuck with me from a psychology or sociology class. In this case, the vertical co-housing would be the person's "community." Whether they choose to know everybody within their building is beside the point, but the opportunity is there.

The vertical cohousing was based on the idea of eliminating excess inefficiencies in individual plumbing lines, savings on sharing of electricity and appliances, and all but elimating inefficient floor space, meaning no hallways. The elevator opens directly into a shared kitchen/dining area that would be shared by 4 to 8 units per floor and potentiall two floors per kitchen area. This would be organized as a tenant's "nuclear family."

The rest of the common amenities would be structured similarly based on the amount of people to use it. Meaning every four or so floors there is a common gathering area, be it a workout facility, a pool, game room, home theater, etc. These areas would be the "extended family."

The idea of which has been done with many high-rise towers in Europe that create garden floors every fifteen or twenty floors in modern "green" office towers, ie creating social spaces for subsets within the larger unit. However, as I have said, to some extent this minimizes the person/place/thing interactions or feedback loops that create more intelligent places, ie rather than being 100 on the street, there might be 20 every 100 feet in elevation (although I imagine diminishing returns based on the exponential overlapping that occurs in these semi-lattice networks).

The base of the building, would have a community-wide amenity area. One building we worked on was supposed to have a wii station for resident use.

The last level of the hierarchy is the public, which is the street, or city at-large, and this is where the building would have its "third places"; how the building engages the street and the city. Here could be some overlap with the community-wide amenity area as I have seen in my building with the bar/grocery store as a popular hangout after work for building residents.

Kotkin Makes Sh!t Up or He Cites Those That Do

Statistics. In the wrong hands they can be dangerous. Fortunately, we have good people like Rob Steuteville of the New Urban News to debunk a statistic that Kotkin uses in his paperweight made of stacked and cut printed paper and then more recently picked up and ran with directly into a wall by David Brooks:

David Brooks’s column in The New York Times April 5, “Relax, We’ll Be Fine,” is a hopeful and thoughtful review of Joel Kotkin’s book, The Next Hundred Million. That is what I thought until I came to the following statement, which Brooks apparently picked up from Kotkin: “For every 10 percent reduction in population density, the odds that people will join a local club rise by 15 percent.”

Steuteville then digs in:

If you read the 2006 study (at the source of the statistic), “Social Interaction and Urban Sprawl,” and look at the numbers, you find that going from Boston to a typical suburb does not net a statistical difference in social interaction of any kind.

Brueckner didn’t find any actual decrease in social interaction or activity related to lower-density locations. What difference he did find, however, was favorable to cities. Yes, the typical person in a city was found to have slightly more social interaction than residents in low-density areas.

But Brueckner also assumed bias in the population. He stipulated, with no apparent research to back it up, and no capacity to observe this bias, that people in cities are of a type that is more prone to social interaction. He put in an equation to counteract this supposed bias, which he called an “unobservable propensity.” In other words, he placed a theoretical thumb on the scales.

Using that method, of course, I could prove anything — that reduction in smoking could reduce your chances of getting cancer, for example.

He then counters with a more recent and at least seemingly more objective study:

Podobnik compared a new community that has a new urbanist design — Orenco Station — to both a conventional suburb and two older city neighborhoods in a longitudinal study. Orenco Station is considerably denser than the conventional suburb, and more carefully designed to encourage walking and facilitate social interaction. People in Orenco Station report that they participate in group activities at nearly double the rate of all of the comparison neighborhoods.

More importantly, perhaps, the Orenco Station residents reported participating in higher-quality activities. In the conventional suburb and the city neighborhoods, the activities were mostly neighborhood watch and homeowners association meetings. In Orenco Station, residents cited book clubs, group dinners, and other informal neighborhood activities. To me, food and literature sound more fulfilling than looking for crime and property violations.

Other studies have come to similar conclusions, including 2009 research that compared new urban developments in Canada to conventional suburban communities. Just like Orenco Station, these new urban Canadian neighborhoods have higher density and are designed with a mix of uses, pedestrian-friendly streets, and appealing public gathering spaces. Surveys in other new urban communities such as Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Celebration in Kissimmee, Florida, have also indicated strong social ties.

None of these studies have shown precisely why new urban places have relatively strong connections among residents — only that this pattern exists. The simplest explanation is that the new urban design, intended to foster social ties, is working. It could also be that people who want to have more social ties choose to live in places that are designed with that goal in mind. Both factors are probably at work.

Lesson: don't believe everything you read. Even this: Joel Kotkin was not born on this Earth and was actually a direct descendant of Xenu sent here to perpetuate the malignant terra firma melanoma of sprawl and destroy the world.